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Things come in threes.  

First Representative Williams of South Carolina yelled, “You lie!” at the President during his speech on health care reform.

Then Serena Williams went off on a line judge at the U.S. Open.

Then Kanye West lost it at the Grammy Awards Ceremony.

The Serena thing is understandable—she’s out there fighting for her life and is all pumped up.  John McEnroe did much worse and is now a distinguished elder statesman of tennis.  Let’s give Serena a break.

But the other two guys stepped way over the line.  Screaming at the President and hijacking a microphone at a public ceremony are disruptive and rude behaviors.

It’s interesting that it got them both a lot of attention. I suspect that was Kanye’s motive.  I think Representative Williams is just a guy who is used to speaking his mind and lost the gyroscope on his social skills.

And that’s what can happen to us as presenters. 

I know one guy who was questioned about his marketing plan by an executive committee.  They wanted to know how he came up with his forecast number.  He told them and they said it didn’t seem right.

After a lot of going back and forth on his methodologies for determining the forecast, he got impatient and said, with his hands on his hips, “Well, if you don’t like the number, what do you want the number to be?”

You can imagine the silence in the room.  The President of the company took a breath and said, “Randy, why don’t we figure that out later.  Thank you for your time.”

Randy did not get sent to Siberia, but almost.  It took him years to earn his way back into the good graces of the executive committee.

Think two or three times before you let your temper get the best of you when you’re in the public eye.  Staying calm under pressure demonstrates maturity and leadership. 

More than communicating information and ideas, presenting is also a demonstration of character. 

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

On June 20th in the Wall Street Journal, in response to the media coverage of Tim Russert’s untimely death, Peggy Noonan wrote in her Declarations column, “When somebody dies we tell his story and try to define and isolate what was special about it–what it was he brought to the party, how he enhanced life by showing up. In this way we educate ourselves about what really matters.”

“In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn’t. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. [...] That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important.”

Reading this, it struck me that we could say the same thing about public speaking. We make a show of admiring speakers who are clever, rich with data slides, equipped with approved platform behaviors and polished texts. But in the end, what we really like in speakers is character.

Character traits that appeal to audiences are varied, but certainly confidence is one, tempered, we hope, with humility. Genuine interest in the audience is another, or at least an empathetic understanding of their needs and concerns.

Finally, I myself like speakers who appear to be authentic, true to themselves, not working too hard to please me, but are nevertheless skilled at holding my attention.

Think about this. When a speech or presentation is over, which do you remember the longest: what the speaker said, or the impression the speaker created?

Decision makers rarely undertake an important project without first hearing the project leader explain it to them. They are listening for two things–grasp of the material, and the requisite character needed to overcome the inevitable obstacles any large project will encounter.

When a presentation is over, and listeners gather to discuss it and pass judgment, the speaker’s expertise is the dimension they consider overtly. But deep down, their decisions are informed by their perceptions of the speaker’s character.

I bristle at those who say to presenters, “Just be yourself.”  Which self?  The self that converses with my best friend’s grandmother at her dining room table, or the guy who teases his teammates and drinks beer while taking off his hockey equipment in the locker room?

What if my self lacks expressiveness, intellectual clarity, empathy for others, a sense of humor?  Should I just be me and hope for the best?

The fact is, I’m a lot of different people and I wear many different costumes.  I don’t go to weddings wearing my running shorts, and I don’t go to the gym wearing my tuxedo.  I have costumes and behaviors for various functions.

In fact, most of us are offended by untucked shirts, short skirts, and baseball caps at the opera or a graduation ceremony.   And most audiences experience a nonrational annoyance at speakers with inappropriate presentation behaviors and clothing.

This is because style communicates character.  Every presentation is a mingling of fact-based argument and impressions.  Shrewd observers discern character traits in how we dress and present ourselves.  The words we use, the intonations and pacing of our speech, our body language, the frequency of our blinks, of our “ers and uhms”–they all add up to the audience’s perception of our abilities.  The French naturalist Buffon concluded that “Style is the man himself.”

Should we tell cell-phone manufacturers not to worry about style.  “Just make plain old phones, don’t worry about how they look.”

Shall we tell Ford, GM, and Chrysler to fire all their designers and give us boxey vehicles in one shade of black?

Shall we all give up on fashion, and wear identical burlap sacks?

I don’t think we want to do any of these things, and we don’t want to “just be ourselves” when we’re presenting. We want to win the assent of others.  We want to induce belief when we speak.  We want to inspire trust, loyalty, respect.  We need to use all the arrows in our quiver.

There are many (some in high places) who scorn any proficiency in adding force and color to a presentation.  These people are often completely ineffective themselves.   They scorn the persuasive arts and their audiences may very well dismiss them as irrelevant.

The suppression of style is itself a style.  Remember Senator Sam Ervin, who brought down the Nixon White House with his, “Aw shucks, I’m just a country lawyer” style.  Very effective.  The stealth approach.

The bottom line is that you can’t affect others with your idea if you yourself are not affected by it.  Your listeners cannot tell if you are affected by it except by your language and expression.  The main reason we make presentations is to demonstrate not only our mastery of the idea we’re presenting, but our ability to overcome the obstacles, the passions and fears of others who may get in the way of it’s implementation.

In other words, the audience is looking for good ideas and someone to make them happen.  Your style is a big chunk of your substance.